d her temples in a splendid
coil down the arch of her neck, and shining in strong contrast
through the gauzy dark sheen of her black gown. But where the light
fell, there was that suspicion of red which the last faint tendril a
dying sunbeam throws out in a parting clutch at the bosom of a cloud.

It gave one a feeling of the benediction of twilight.

And when she looked up, her eyes were the blessings poured
out--luminous, helpful, uplifting, restful,--certain of life and
immortality, full of all that which one sees not, when awake, but
only when in the borderland of sleep, and memory, unleashed, tracks
back on the trail of sweet days which once were.

They spake indeed always thus: "Let not your heart be troubled....
Peace, be still."

Her face did not seem to be a separate thing--apart--as with most
women. For there are women whose hair is one thing and whose face is
another. The hair is beautiful, pure, refined. The face beautiful,
merely. The hair decorous, quiet, unadorned and debauched not by
powder and paint, stands aloof as Desdemona, Ophelia or Rosalind. The
face, brazen, with a sharp-tongued, vulgar queen of a thing in its
center, on a throne, surrounded by perfumed nymphs, under the sensual
glare of two rose-colored lamps, sits and holds a Du Barry court.

They are neighbors, but not friends, and they live in the same
sphere, held together only by the law of gravity which holds to one
spot of earth the rose and the ragwort. And the hair, like the rose,
in all the purity of its own rich sweetness, all the naturalness of
its soul, sits and looks down upon the face as a queen would over the
painted yellow thing thrust by the law of life into her presence.

But the face of Alice Westmore was companion to her hair. The
firelight fell on it; and while the glow from the lamp fell on her
hair in sweet twilight shadows of good night, the rosy, purple beams
of the cheerful firelight lit up her face with the sweet glory of a
perpetual good morning.

Travis stood looking at her forgetful of all else. His lips were
firmly set, as of a strong mind looking on its life-dream, the quarry
of his hunter-soul all but in his grasp. Flashes of hope and little
twists of fear were there; then, as he looked again, she raised, half
timidly, her face as a Madonna asking for a blessing; and around his,
crept in the smile which told of hope long deferred.

Selfish, impure, ambitious, forceful and masterful as he was, he
stood